ENUGU — THE National Population Commission, NPC, said yesterday that the national census to be conducted in 2005 would gulp over N34.5 billion. Of this amount, the European Union, which is one of Nigeria’s development partners, would provide 113 million Euro or N17.5 billion to finance the project.
National Chairman of the commission, Chief Samu’ila Makama, who disclosed this at a press conference in Enugu, also said that the Federal Government is expected to provide the balance of N17 billion out of which N5 billion had been appropriated in the 2004 budget.
He also said that the Department for International Development of the British Government, DFID, would assist the commission with satellite imageries worth 7.5 million Pound Sterling, adding that a contract for the supply of the equipment has already been awarded by the agency.
Commenting on the twin issues of ethnicity and religion which in the past inhibited accurate census in the country, Makama said that the commission was looking into the controversial issues, explaining that the President will soon summon a meeting of the National Council of States to deliberate on these issues so as to arrive at a consensus on them.
He said these issues could not be resolved by a recent stakeholders’ meeting in Kaduna, hence the resort to seek the opinion of the President on the matter. He explained that the rivalries between Christians and Muslims on one hand and the major ethnic tribes, which had been one of the most contending issues affecting the unity of the country, must not be allowed to rear its ugly heads in the 2005 census.
The NPC chairman explained that Nigerians living abroad would not be enumerated during the forthcoming census because the commission lacked the "executive capacity" to count them, but he, however, stated that foreigners living in Nigeria would be duly enumerated.
On plans to forestall influx of illegal aliens during the exercise, he stated that it was the duty of the security agencies to forestall such cross-border movement but noted that there was need for anybody to come into the country just for the purpose of being counted.
Also asked about plans put in place by the commission to ensure that political influence does not frustrate efforts at arriving at an acceptable population figures, Makama said the commission was however, not unaware of the problem which caused lack of confidence in the previous exercises, warning that should anybody tries to influence the enumerators to inflate figures, such reports would be rejected.
He said that with the ongoing demarcation of enumeration areas, which limited those to be enumerated in a particular area to between 250 and 500 persons, it would be difficult for anybody to come up with false figures, adding that necessary measures had been put in place to forestall such moves including the use of automated fingerprint identification method and computerisd machine readable forms.
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